As mentioned in the About section, I am a life long doodler. And I’ve always been reasonably good.

But in the back of my mind it has also been a a crutch; an excuse to not do the best work possible. Make it funny and laugh it off but don’t apply the full weight of skill and concentration.

“Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards was my first step on the path towards applying myself to drawing.

The beginning of the book has a few exercises to complete, in order to gauge your current skill level and to act as an indicator of progress. Here are my initial Hand and Self Portraits (be gentle!).

Note the date. New years resolution anyone?

Completed just a few days later:

I didn’t actually work my way through the entire book in 5 days – that claim is for one of their 8hr/day courses. So the follow up drawings took a little while to get done. But they did get done:

I neglected to date this one but it was my first time working with toned paper, which I quite enjoyed:

Definitely better and I’m sure my wife would agree that I captured the nose size perfectly!

And that is what a few months of practice can do. Since then I have been encouraged to draw even more and have been doing at least one sketch per day. It is the cumulative practice over time that builds up to a noticeable change.

To be honest I haven’t yet finished all the exercises in Right Side yet. I’ll focus on finishing the last chapter this weekend.

You may have found your way here looking for articles on the Ukulele, as that was this site’s focus for years. Alas, I no longer play as much as I used to and decided to redesign the page to reflect my current goals and interests.

But rejoice! The old articles will still be available in the Archives tab under Ukulele!

The new design is much more austere than the last. I’m really digging it and I hope you do too.